How to Implement Student-Centered Approaches and Techniques for Reading
The keyword (as always) is “collaboration.” Environments that are student-centered depend on students receiving instruction and guidance primarily from one another, and not chiefly from their teacher. According to Weymouth (2011), there are several basics included in student-centered reading. Some of these involve the practice and refinement of reading subskills. For example, students may be given a reading assignment and then provided with questions from the teacher that reinforce or review vocabulary and/or comprehension. However, although such questions may come from the teacher, students should still work on such inquiries with their peers, checking their answers and offering feedback to one another. As with any student-centered learning environment, the multiplicity of perspectives and insights grows exponentially; the teacher’s instruction, perspective or interpretations provide only one angle of viewing a work of literature. Students working in groups with one another are able to avail themselves of several different perspectives, hints or suggestions. Beyond the reinforcement of reading basics, group work can also increase students’ interpretive capabilities. In a student-centered reading environment, teachers should make every effort to personalize reading assignments by carefully selecting themes and content in reading assignments that will lend themselves to students relating to them. Though not every storyline will have transpired in every student’s life, there are most often specific aspects of a story that may be considered within students’ own lives. For example, if the idea of naming things is discussed in a story, students may be encouraged to discuss the meaning and significance of their own name with their peers. Teachers’ most important jobs, then, are to focus first on underlying themes in reading, and subsequently choose topics or themes discussed in the reading that are most likely to connect with students’ own lives and experiences. Lastly (and arguably most importantly) teachers should then design activities that will allow students to connect their own and their peers’ experiences to the reading. Such activities may take the form of discussion groups, role-playing games, debates, artistic representation, research and reporting, or merely the exercise of writing creatively about the issues and ideas presented in the original reading assignment (Weymouth, 2012). Such groups have been referred to as “Reading Circles,” in which it is the teacher’s primary job “to not teach,” but to offer guidance via such strategies as brief review sessions and Socratic questioning. The teacher’s role should remain peripheral; never center-stage (Marygrove, 2014). According to Hill, the ideal Literature Circles should be * Reader response-centered as opposed to teacher and/or text-centered * A component of a comprehensive literacy program as opposed to the entire reading curriculum * Groups of readers formed by book choice as opposed to teacher-assigned groups * Structured for student independence and responsibility as opposed to unstructured “talk time” * Guided by student insight and questions asopposed to by teacher and/or curriculum-based questions * A context to apply reading skills as opposed to a context in which to do skills work * Flexible and fluid as opposed to being of a“prescribed” mold (2007). Moreover, Literature Circles should make the most use of students’ individual strengths. For example, within a group there may be a variety of learning styles represented, such as visual/artistic, verbal, and organizational. The use of each student’s own style when reporting to his classmates about the literature not only strengthens a student’s own view of and skill with his strengths, but it offers all students the sort of diversity that maximizes understanding of and respect for the diversity of talents in the world at large (Daniels, 2002). Just as they must change their approach to students’ reading and reporting, so too must they change their methods of evaluation. Rather than having one (teacher-centered) set of evaluation standards, teachers may consider conducting ongoing narrative observational logs, performance assessments, checklists, student conferences, group interviews, or one-on-one conferences (Marygrove, 2014).